Villanova Basketball’s All-Time Assist Leaders: 2019 Update

With the 2019 season over and the Villanova Wildcats holding Big East regular season and tournament titles, it’s time to update the record books. The Wildcats said goodbye to two of the greats this season, but their names and numbers will live on in the All-Time Stats. This week we’ll be going through the five major stat categories and updating them with the accomplishments from the past year.

Our next stat to update is assists. Despite not having a true point guard on the team, this year’s squad really showcased Jay Wright’s concept of the “Nova Guard”. That is to say a combo guard that can do a bit of everything including creating for themselves and others. The result was Villanova’s best team Assist% (Assists/Field Goals Made) since the 2016 National Championship season, and a Top 50 rank in the country.

The player most responsible for that was Phil Booth, who accounted for more than 27% of the team’s assists this season with a team and career high 137. That was enough to push Booth and his 374 career assists into the Top 20 in All-Time assists for Villanova. That puts him smack between two other greats, White Rigsby and Lance Miller.

Looking ahead to 2020, Collin Gillespie (131) is on pace to break into the 200 assist club in his junior season.

*Villanova lists Wali Jones as having 233 career assists, although the stat wasn’t officially recorded until after he played.

**Donte DiVincenzo’s freshman season and Phil Booth’s junior season also include stats from their shortened redshirt years